volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

The Tigris at Takrit. 109
his temper and hurled one of the merchant's stone
weights at us. The soldier seized the Sayyid and a
scuffle began, and as some of the bystanders began to
hit and kick the soldier, White and I attacked his
attackers and a sort of free fight took place, during which
the merchant's scales and shelves got smashed and his
stock scattered about. Before the soldier had done
with the Sa5^id the Ka'im Makam, or local governor,
appeared with a couple of his men and seized the Sayyid,
who had lost his turban and most of his garments in
his struggle with the soldier. It seemed that his quarrelsome
disposition was well known, and that he was a
fanatic and violent Shi'ite, who never missed an opportunity
of fighting with Christians. The Ki'im Makam
insisted on our going to his house, where we drank coffee
with him and stayed a short time, and he showed us
much civility. He excused the rudeness of the Sayyid
on the ground that he suffered greatly from fever, so
I left some quinine with the official, and asked him to
dose the Sayyid with it in order to prevent him from
making further attacks upon travellers.
We returned to our raft in the early afternoon
accompanied by the Ki'im Makam and several of the
people from the bazar, who wished us a safe passage to
Baghdad. The river at Takrit was very wide, quite 600
yards, and the current was very strong. We changed
raftsmen here and were very sorry to part with Salim,
who had brought us down from Mosul, and had told us
many interesting stories and traditions about earlier
British travellers whom he and his father and his grandfather
had served. He seemed to know and to have names
for every rock in the river, and he believed firmly that
three which he pointed out to us were the homes of
evil spirits, and gave them as wide a berth as he possibly
could. Our new raftsman was not ready to start till
three o'clock, but when we unmoored the current carried
the raft along at a good pace ; we had a fine view of
the country on the east bank. There were large continuous
patches of cultivation to be seen in many places,
and groups of palm trees became quite common. We